Adding Their Voices to End Violence Against Women

This Valentine’s Day, parents from the DiscoverBooks program at Kelly School in Holyoke, Massachusetts added their voices to the call to end violence against women at the One Billion Rising event in Springfield. This event was part of the international V-Day feminist movement founded by Eve Ensler, which deplores the fact that one in three women across the world will experience rape or physical abuse in her lifetime. The V-Day campaign this year called for a billion women and men around the globe to walk out and dance in protest of the violence.

Before the outing, the mothers in the program discussed the important women in their lives, citing mothers, grandmothers and friends as their sources of strength. As a group we came to the consensus that we wouldn’t be where we were today if it weren’t for the love and sacrifices of these women in our lives. We then acknowledged another commonality: that we all knew women and girls who had suffered sexual or physical violence. Dancing to protest this violence was a great way to spend our Valentine’s Day afternoon. We danced with anger at the violence, but we also danced with hope—hope that our dancing would contribute to crafting a more peaceful world for women.